Mount Pleasant is one of the oldest towns in Southwestern Pennsylvania. It grew at the crossroads of two Native
American paths, routes that were to become major arteries into the western wilderness of Colonial and Early America.
In 1755 during the French and Indian War, General Braddock cut a military road northwest from Virginia, following Nemicolon's path known later as
Braddock's Road. After the Penn's purchase of western territories from the Six Nation Indian Tribes, Glades Path was opened to permit settlement from the East. (Now Route 31)
The English, Scots-Irish, and Germans, many of the
Revolutionary War Veteran's, seeing the traffic at the crossroads
as an opportunity, established taverns, inns, and blacksmiths' shops to drovers and weary travelers. The settlement
became the center of the rich surrounding farming area. Grain produced on the frontier was usually converted to whiskey
for easy transport to the eastern markets. In 1794, during the Whiskey Rebellion, federal troops encamped
in the town arresting the local "Whiskey Boys" who protested the new whiskey tax. In this
period the settlement earned it's name "Helltown"
Henry Clay Frick clerked at his Uncle Overholt's store on Main Street. Frick was to consolidate
the areas coke and coal industry, becoming a millionaire by age 30.
After 1870 immigrants began to arrive from Eastern Europe to work in the mines and coke ovens.
Cheap labor fueled and attracted two glass factories: Bryce Brothers in 1896, makers of hand blown crystal, and Smith Glass
in 1907. Bryce Brothers continues as Lenox Crystal. The old Bryce factory became a warehouse for Levin Furniture, one of a number of local family owned businesses
three generations old. Much of the character and flavor of the old town remains to make Mount Pleasant an interesting place to visit and shop.

* Click Here - The Western Wilderness, As Part of the Township,
A Frontier Town at the Crossroad, The First Fifty Years, A Second Growth, In Our Time

* Click Here - Our Neighbors,
Story of a Miner,
Our Institutions,
Religion,
Education,
A History of the Mount Pleasant Schools,
The Institute,
Health,
Early Medicine,
The Dispensary and Hospital,
Medic 10,
Auxiliaries,
The Cemetery,
The Newspaper,
The Library,
Our Authors

* Click Here - The Borough,
Corporate History,
Fire Department,
Sesquicentennial, Citations and Elected
officials, State and County
Annexation Map

In the 1890's, when coke was king, and the Connellsville Coke Region was the palatial seat of rule,
labor disputes were fairly common. The coal strike in the Connellsville Coke Region in 1891 led, like
many labor disputes, to violence, which culminated, but did not end, in the death by shooting of nine
strikers outside the Morewood Coke Works, near Mt. Pleasant, PA on April 2nd, 1891. This incident,
alternately dubbed "The Morewood Massacre" or "The Morewood Riots," remains mostly forgotten, or
overshadowed by more famous incidents of violence, such as that which took at the Homestead
Steel Works.